One of the maddest races on earth is the Baja 1000. About 400 starters spend more than a day and a night tearing non-stop down insanely rough desert tracks. It all takes place in Mexican bandit country so remote and lawless that no-one goes to spectate.
VW has built this silhouette Touareg which ought to be in with a shout. It’s got a mid-mounted Le Mans Audi V12 TDI in a purpose-built spaceframe chassis, and suspension travel as high as a bus. It’s like a remote-control toy, except some drastically superfit driver has got to strap himself into the maelstrom and take the bucking beast by the scruff of the neck.
VW has done this as part of its effort to promote diesel in the US. And the US seems to be listening.
On the day of the show, the new Jetta Clean Diesel won the Green Car of the Year award in the US, a gong whose jury includes such various environmental worthies as the heads of the Sierra Club and the Natural Resources Defense Council. And Carrol Shelby.
The Jetta CleanDiesel has the 140bhp 2.0TDI we’ve seen before, but with a whole chemistry lab in the exhaust. The result is emissions clean enough to be sold in all 50 US states – and it’ll pass all European regulations until at least 2015.
世界上最瘋狂的比賽之一——Baja1000 。大約有400名車手花費(fèi)了超過(guò)一天一夜的時(shí)間在狂暴而粗糙的沙漠上不停止的奔馳。這都發(fā)生在墨西哥這個(gè)土匪國(guó)家，偏僻而且違法，以至于沒(méi)有人去觀看 。
大眾汽車已經(jīng)樹立了這個(gè)途銳的模型。它的地盤上有特別空間用于中置勒芒奧迪的V12 TDI發(fā)動(dòng)機(jī)，懸架像巴士一樣高。除了像在風(fēng)暴中把自己捆綁起來(lái)和像騎在馴獸脖頸上一樣，它就像一個(gè)遙控玩具。
大眾汽車已經(jīng)把這個(gè)當(dāng)做在美國(guó)推進(jìn)柴油機(jī)計(jì)劃的一部分。美國(guó)似乎也有回應(yīng)。
在車展的當(dāng)天，新捷達(dá)清潔柴油機(jī)獲得了美國(guó)綠色汽車大獎(jiǎng)，一個(gè)包含Sierra Club主席和美國(guó)自然資源保護(hù)委員會(huì)主席在內(nèi)的眾多知名環(huán)保人士組成的評(píng)審委員會(huì)給出的獎(jiǎng)?wù)?，其陪審團(tuán)包括各種環(huán)境worthies作為首長(zhǎng)塞拉俱樂(lè)部和美國(guó)自然資源保護(hù)委員會(huì)。
我們以前看過(guò)的捷達(dá)清潔柴油機(jī)是140bhp 2.0TDI，但整個(gè)排氣都在化學(xué)實(shí)驗(yàn)室。結(jié)果是它的排放物清潔到可以出售到所有美國(guó)50個(gè)州，而且它會(huì)將所有歐洲法規(guī)至少到2 015年。
